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Xerox Overhauls Brand Image With Focus on Software, Services

As Revenue Grows From Array of New Products, Marketer to Evolve All Marketing as Well

YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- Brother Dominic wouldn't recognize his time savior anymore.
Xerox worked with Interbrand to overhaul its logo and overall brand identity.
Centenarian technology company Xerox, famed for a Super Bowl campaign showing a monk, the aforementioned Brother Dominic, copying -- rather than transcribing -- sacred manuscripts, is undergoing a facelift to reflect the modern digital-software and services brand it has become.

More than copiers and documents
Indeed, the old-fashioned "copier company" and the even more recent "document company" now launches a product or service every 11 days, said Richard Wergan, Xerox VP-worldwide brand advertising and marketing. About two-thirds of the company's revenue today comes from products and services launched in the last two years, he said, and services generated $2.5 billion in sales for the first three quarters of 2007, an 8% increase over the previous year.

"The brand is extremely strong, [but] the visual brand did not fully represent what Xerox is today," Mr. Wergan said. "It was a significant opportunity for the brand identity to play catch up with the brand."

To that end, the marketer's sleek new look features a lowercase "xerox" logo punctuated by a red ball with a triple-lined "x" slashed through the center, and it has added a rainbow of colors in the form of two-tiered waves to be used in marketing and communication materials. About the only thing that stays is the color red, which consumer research revealed was tightly associated with the brand in customer's minds.

Xerox worked with Omnicom Group brand consultancy Interbrand on the overhaul.

Began two years ago
The brand review began two years ago with no definite changes in mind. In fact, the initial goal was simply to discover consumer's current global brand perception of the brand.

"Xerox didn't go into this saying, 'Let's change it,'" said Maryann Stump, senior director-brand strategy at Interbrand. "The change was made through qualitative and quantitative research. And although the change is substantial, it happened for us in a very linear and almost incremental way."

Another reason to modernize was a bit of future-proofing. That is, the new identity "already has the capability to evolve over time," Mr. Wergan said. The red X sphere, for instance, will be important in mobile and internet applications because it pops as a 3-D image and can spin and move.

And while the new look caps nearly a decade of turnaround since CEO Anne Mulcahy took the reins in 2000, this first change is just the beginning of further marketing moves. Mr. Wergen said the new brand identity is "not resting solely on visual changes."

Significant campaign planned
He said a significant advertising and brand-marketing campaign is planned for this year, and that while Xerox will continue to use its ongoing color campaign, it will "evolve" the creative as well as its media strategy. When asked about other marketing changes, Mr. Wergan said that going through the brand identity change has compelled the company to evaluate all marketing strategies in place.

"What we will continue to do is reevaluate the marketing strategies we have in the market and make sure it's up to date and living up to today's Xerox," he said. "You'll certainly see changes in the way we communicate branding and strategy in 2008."

Xerox, as well as most of its information technology brethren, will have a tougher task in 2008, with many analysts already predicting slower IT spending for the year over the previous one.